LHCSAS: A Lightweight and Highly-Compatible Solution for ADS-B Security

Abstract

Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast (ADS-B), as the key component of next-generation air transportation system, becomes the replacement of secondary surveillance radar (SSR) since it will enhance air traffic control by requiring the aircraft periodically broadcast its geographical information. But the obstacle blocking the deployment of the promising ADS-B belongs to security concerns where ADS-B messages are all transmitted in the clear and can be forged and modified easily. The already proposals for ADS-B security refer to the privacy or integrity unilaterally, and all require the modification of existing ADS-B protocols. In this paper, we design ingeniously a solution for ADS-B security, by integrating carefully some recent specific crypto primitives, and then modifying properly them to adapt to ADS-B features. As opposed to previous methods, our solution is at the same time (1) lightweight for resource- constraint avionics devices and already congested data links, (2) highly-compatible to existing ADS-B protocols, (3) tolerating package loss for ADS-B broadcast data links. This makes our solution particularly practical and easy-deploying. Security analysis indicates that our solution can achieve confidentiality and integrity of ADS-B messages, and performance evaluation, based on the real-world ADS-B data, proves efficiency of our solution from cost of computation and communication. Furthermore, the deployment on a real airport environment demonstrates high compatibility of our solution.